


inked cities

by milkvan



Category: Winner (Band)
Genre: M/M, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-13 10:09:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7973005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/milkvan/pseuds/milkvan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>places where reality is slightly altered: tattoo studio</p>
            </blockquote>





	inked cities

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Summer Skin](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7114387) by [seafogs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seafogs/pseuds/seafogs). 



> written for winnerexchange round 2016
> 
> So much love to Wayverly for allowing me to borrow some elements of your fic (and basically ruining your beautiful AU), I really love you so much ♥♥♥

_{the world is made up of cities,_  
_and the spaces between them.}_

The stars are out in full force tonight, drowning the slit of crescent moon with their glittering brilliance, as if in celebration of mankind’s utter defeat. But even Seunghoon knows better than to indulge in man’s favourite tendency to place themselves centre of the universe, especially at such a moment ( _the calm before the storm, the stillness before the vehicle plunges over the cliff into the raging waters_ ). The fading pulses from distant stars shine brighter than ever but now there’s no one to contemplate the show of dazzling proportions.

Alone, Seunghoon strolls on the empty highway with nothing but a thin coat to shield his lanky frame against the rising cold from the north. His fingers drum against the bars of the railings as he continues his way, skirting one or two cars left abandoned at the side and humming a pop song he recently picked up from the radio under his breath. It’s a damn pity that there will not be any new pop song wrapping its catchy tune tightly around his head till he catches himself singing loudly in the showers a beat too late. He was just starting to enjoy the newer generation of Korean pop music streaming from his car radio when the news dropped like dead flies around them, of wars in the east and massacres in the south.

Good things never last in this dog eat dog world.

On his left lies the great Han River, a water dragon winding through the nation. Funny how in all of his many trips across the city, he has never stopped to bask in the exquisiteness of the nearby bridges’ yellow lights set against the murky backdrop of the waters. The sight afforded by this particular vantage point on the highway is a never-changing juxtaposition of light and darkness, constantly printed on postcards boasting of the city’s unique marvels, when it really is no different from the other cities.

All the cities around the world are the same, and already they are starting to mirror the heavenly bodies above them – scintillating, frantic and _dying_.

The highway forks into different exits and instead of journeying to the end of the exit, he decides to get off at a sharp turn he always hated driving along; by “getting off”, he really means “jumping off”. Guess there’s still a risk-taking teenager somewhere in him, goading him on as he runs the short distance before he is sprung over the railings by the momentum of his back leg. The teenager cheers and whoops loudly when he tumbles onto the grass patch below but the pain that shoots up his calves is enough to shush the teenager quiet.

Enough stupid stunts for today, he huffs under his breath. His vision swims before him and it’s only when it steadies that he lets out a shaky breath. It’s pertinent that he focuses on what he came here for before it’s too late.

(before the cities flare and fade)

Thankfully, the pain subsides and he continues ahead through the many snaking alleys in the old neighbourhood.

He recalls the first time he entered the maze of haphazard houses and narrow streets nestled along gentle slopes, nostalgia accumulated into the gravel of the roads over the years rising through rubber and metal, so much so that the low rumble of his car’s engine sounded faintly like the humming of folk songs sang at the roadsides. His mother once told him that it was one of the busiest areas in the 2030s before the business hub moved southwards and for this he was glad since it was a refreshing breather from the hustle and bustle of downtown.

Something in the way the gates of the houses are thrown open as he rolled past told him that security and the safety of the households weren’t much of a problem here. When he parked under the streetlight in front of an old building, his heart is light without much worries. His lungs sighed contently at the lack of smog and pollution here and he allowed himself to be intoxicated by the sweetness of the fresh air, allowed himself to be led up the dim stairway and into silent corridors.

That was two years ago but it seems like a lifetime ago, when wars were waged in foreign countries and blood flowed into rivers, soaking the soil of lands that were so far away from their own.

Destruction finally dropped its question mark; quickly replacing it was an exclamation mark of terrified screams and mournful weeping that never seemed to end, worsening night by night. Presently, a temporary sojourn blankets the skies of the different nations, the curl of a comma infecting every nook and cranny with its hook of eerie silence. No one knows when the flimsy banner of peace will rip, no one knows when the comma will shrivel to a pitiful dot and no one wants to be there when it is placed at the end of mankind’s history - Seunghoon included.

He hates how the wide stairways resound with every thudding step he makes as he climbs swiftly to the third floor of the building. The fact that he hasn’t met anyone desperate enough to kill is already an achievement in itself but he is too fearful to slow down, his long legs taking him past empty storefronts that are bare except for a table or a mannequin left behind by previous owners. The sight of these insignificant objects sitting desolate in abandoned corners for years and years stops him cold, and his heart suddenly grows heavy and weary.

What significant things were left behind in the chase for “the perfect life”? He has never once stopped to ponder. Now that everything has come to this, he comes to realize the worthlessness of his own selfish pursuit and the need to focus intensifies by the ticking second, pressing down on his chest like the weight of a name one can only whisper on one’s deathbed.

A need to make sure he doesn’t leave behind the things that matter the most to him.

Or rather, the one person whose name is lodged deep in the ocean bed of his heart, a gleaming treasure in the shadowy recesses of forgotten terrains.

The corridor grunts with the reverberations of his hurried footsteps as he dashes to the door, his fingers shaking but fortunately, just slightly so that he isn’t impeded from punching the correct number combination (his birthdate). The successful chime and the slide of the door’s electronic lock is mere mini-seconds before the loud slam of the door sounds out in the corridor, with Seunghoon leaning against it on the other side. Heart thumping wildly in his throat, he swallows and finds that his mouth has gone dry, and the fabric of his shirt sticking to his back, drenched with sweat.

He’s a sailor dreaming of earthy soils and the sweetness of freshwater, a desert traveller yearning for the cooling breeze of the ocean. It’s the end of the world and he can find neither shelter nor respite outside. But right here is home to him, with its cheerful minty green walls, the muskiness of jasmine coconut soap overwhelming his senses and the welcoming arms he throws himself into, wrapping his own around the other’s torso tightly.

“Woah woah woah, you okay there?” He hears the worry weaving into the quiet bass of Mino’s voice but he doesn’t trust his own voice to work without breaking. Soothing hands rub circles on his back, the understanding warmth of the palms smooths away the fear and dread coiled inside him. The arms lock around his upper back again and the back of his head in cradled in Mino’s large hand.

“Hey, it’s okay. I’m here and you’re safe with me.”

There is no actual credibility to Mino’s words because it is the night before streaks of flashes and radiation drop like clawing falling stars, and a tattoo studio is hardly the best place to be in when every single building in the city is blown up to smithereens. But Seunghoon believes every word whispered to his ear with each ounce of muscle, veins and arteries in his pumping heart, beating painfully in the brittle cage of his ribs.

For now, for him, that is enough to get him through the night and for the rest of his life.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t get your favourite tteokbokki. The ahjumma wasn’t there in her usual spot tonight.” The thick cotton of Mino’s hoodie muffles his soft voice but he likes to imagine that tiny particles of syllables seeps through fabric and skin, reaching a small part of the other, where he knows memories of them together are stored in an old cookie tin box.

(He has a similar one hidden in the corner of his heart’s chamber – tarnished but he believes it impregnable to fires, smokes and ashes - and when Mino’s low laugh rumbles through their chests, it is added into the box.)

“She probably entered the vaults already. Looks like it’s just you and me in this great big world tonight. The stars and the moon to ourselves … I like that.” Mino’s boyish grin is wide and beautiful, alluring and devastating in every way.

The last bit of resolve in Seunghoon is shed, discarded to the floor like their clothes left in their slow dance to the bedroom, and his quivering fingers can only find the reassurance he desperately needs in the heat of Mino’s skin. Wandering hands and tempting lips travel down the ridges of his back, a secret kiss is left in the burrow of his skin and he feels himself made anew under large hands fit for a king, or a god.

(Seunghoon knows that they don’t need the decaying stars and the lonely moon tonight. On Mino’s smiling face, he glimpses crinkling crescent moons lighting his way home and when he is kissed senseless by the other, stars burn on the inside of his closed eyelids, a fiery red glowing in the midst of a nebula.)

 

 

 

_"walls disappear, the sky fills this room,_  
_when you are here with me"_

He supposes there is something terribly saccharine in having his boyfriend ink his upper back on their last night together, after sex when the high of his orgasm still leaves his skin rosy and pliant.

The ceiling fan in the room spins lethargically above them, the sound of its slow whirls drowned out by the buzzing as Mino continued wielding the tattoo machine over his body like a weapon of art or love, Seunghoon can no longer tell the difference between the two anymore. Breathe in through the nose, breathe out in a hiss through the lips – that is how he keeps a steady supply of air in and out of his lungs through the pain.

Before they began, Mino had kindly plopped the maetamon plushie onto Seunghoon’s lap with an amused tug of lips upwards. “You’re going to need it later”, that was all the tattoo artist said and true enough, Seunghoon’s fingers were already digging into the soft toy when the cluster of needles first pierced his skin.

He doesn’t know how he managed to keep himself from flinching or squirming for the past few hours but gradually, he grows accustomed to the incessant humming of the machine and the pain till he feels nothing, other than a slight discomfort nagging his back. (It also helped that Mino was gentle with him, stopping now and then to press a tender kiss or a warm rub down his back, easing the twisted knot of nerves formed at the depth of his guts.)

Outside the window, a streak of the deepest indigo is drawn across the watercolour painting of the horizon and dawn approaches swiftly from the distance, bringing with it watery sunrays and a lifetime of separation for the both of them. The orange orb is sitting low in the skies when the buzzing of the tattoo machine stops, leaving the air poignant with unspoken words and the slow beating of their hearts – muscles that are the size of a fist each, and yet, soaked to the brim with the memories they shared.

The sting of his tattoo is quickly alleviated as his skin comes into contact with the cool of the damp towel, lightly dabbed on his back by Mino. Based on his memory of how the strokes and sweeps of the tattoo artist went across his skin, Seunghoon silently tries to construct the tattoo in his mind, very much like a traveller having to rely on the hazy memories of his grandfather’s tales and descriptions, told before bedtime when he was a kid, to navigate the intricate streets and alleys of a city he has never visited before.

“It’s done. Come to the mirror and I’ll hold up another one so that you can see it.”

Seunghoon has only a split-second to decide but what fun is there in knowing it all? A traveller delights in the unknown, in exploring the unexpected turns and corners of the back alleys, and so he tugs Mino down on the bed and wraps the other’s arms around himself. “I don’t want to see it or know what it looks like, at least not now. Without describing it, tell me why you have drawn or written that particular picture or phrase or whatever you have done. … Just to let you know, if you have tattooed a pile of shit on my back for the last few hours, I will be really mad at you for the rest of my life.”

The vibrations of Mino’s laughter are echoed in Seunghoon’s chest as he moves closer, pressing his chest to Seunghoon’s back and resting his head on the shoulder in front of him. The waves of laughter die down in the soft light through the window and they sit in the silence of Mino’s musings.

“ _We each carry a city within ourselves_ , that’s what you read to me a year ago and I’ve been thinking about it for a while. But you … I can’t wrap myself around what kind of city you are supposed to be. Whenever I think I have gotten you figured out, whenever I think your streets have been mapped out in the palms of my hands, they disappear, shift and realign before my eyes and under my hands.”

With each word, Mino’s voice grows softer till it’s just a whisper flitting between light and shadow. A gentle smile blossoms on his face when Seunghoon turns around to face him and places both palms on his neck, the warmth from fingertips emboldening him to speak again.

“That’s the thing with you right, you aren’t just a city. You mean the world to me but that’s just not it because you’re the wonders, the marvels and the enigma of the universe cramped into the world. And I’m drawn to you in ways I can’t explain, y-you have me spinning around you, can you believe it? Like a little planet rotating around the sun, that’s what happening and … I’ll always come back to you. It’s not a promise because promises can be broken. It’s more like something tying the both of us together, and not even the end of the world or the end of humanity can stop me from going to you.”

The clocks stop working, the screeches of the approaching aircrafts and the particles of the nuclear detonators lay muted and motionless. Infinity shines in Mino’s eyes as Seunghoon gazes into them, a pulsating reminder that nothing else matters anymore because the other is still here with him, till the last possible moment.

Two words drop from his lips before the distance is closed between them, two words that marked the sealing of his heart for Mino.

“Vice versa.”

 

 

 

_"i’m on edge when i think about_  
_how your name is tomorrow_  
_and everything i have is fleeting."_

Two centuries aren’t enough to reduce a building into dust and fragments but a portion of the tattoo studio had fallen away, leaving Seunghoon a perfect view of the cloudy night sky from where he is sitting. Whether the actual bombings or mutant looters were responsible for the damage, he is too afraid to find out.

Cobwebs are spun around all corners of the place. The photographs of female celebrities used to adorn the walls during the studio’s hair salon days are all gone, leaving nothing but grime and dust to sheen the minty green walls he loved, turning it a greyish shade of yellow.

The ravages of time on everything under the sun are merciless and unforgiving, after all, and he wonders whether the same can be said of his appearance. What would Mino say when they meet, after two hundred years? The gene-altering serum had kept time from ploughing lines on his face and age from wrecking damage on his body but he’s sure Mino will still be able to tell the subtle changes in him (“ _your eyes are older, sadder now_ ”).

The bare beige of his back can be seen through the thin cotton shirt before the cold seeps into his bones and he puts on the leather jacket he found in Minseok’s room. What else is different about him that Mino will comment on? Ah yes, the tattoo on his wrist, depicting a surge in the heartrate before it goes dead again; he certainly hopes that Mino wouldn’t mind not being the first to ink his body but already, he can hear the whine in the other’s voice.

The tattoo was done by Seokmin, a fellow vault-dweller who he had met and made friends with while working on the same cleaning shift twenty years after the vaults had sealed. Blessed with a sharp jawline and an intense pair of eyes, Seokmin reminded him so much of Mino that it was not just once, but thrice that he called the younger one by Mino’s name (of course, embarrassing drunk stories he would rather not remember). A young chap with a heart of gold, Seokmin had waved it off, laughing and confessing that Seunghoon, with puffy cheeks and high-pitched giddy laughter, reminded him of Soonyoung too – a fact he proved by pulling out a polaroid of himself and a guy with small slits of eyes placed on a face that had more cheeks and wide toothy smile than any face Seunghoon has seen before.

“We both have misplaced someone important to us.” One of them had said and the other had chuckled, as if it is a simple coincidence one could liken to a favourite colour or a favourite sport they share.

(Once it did happen and only once, when the years laboured on in the vault without any rest and the bed in the solitary dark was too much to bear for the both of them.

“I don’t think I can ever forget Soonyoung.” Seokmin’s whisper travelled hesitantly across white sheets, the stillness of the air enunciating the quiver in his voice as Seunghoon sat up from the bed, lighting a cigarette with a shaking hand.

The wispy smoke rings from the cigarette wrapped around them, a soundless coil that bound them together in loneliness’ cruel triumph over them.)

Time in the vault had truly become nothing but a social construct, with “day mode” and “night mode” all neatly separated by an automatic switch but for him, it is reduced to mere grains falling from one side of the hourglass to another (from one lifetime of Mino to another without). Waiting all eternity to escape the vault and see Mino again? He’s not worried about that, he has lived through two centuries and he can continue living in the dreary and god-forsaken landscape, if there’s only a single scrap of hope that the other is still alive.

No, what he fears is far worse than that.

Supplies weren’t the only thing to return with those who had gone above to Ground Zero; within the day of the grabbers’ return into the vault, rumours had circulated regarding the fate of dwellers in the other vaults, all of them frightful in varying degrees. Seunghoon wasn’t particular afraid of the story of Vault 921 where dwellers were being replaced by synths, one by one, without anyone knowing the difference between the two. He knows that he would still love Mino the same, human or synth.

But then the story of Vault 112 had came crashing into his guts, bringing with it nightmares of dwellers forced to battle each other to death, each one of them wearing Mino’s face as they laid on the ground, battered and dead. Night after night, he woke up breathless and sweating with the terror of it all as he sobbed into Seokmin’s shirt, letting the other rub circles on his back and whisper “It’s okay, Mino is fine.” over and over again.

The nights since then had been filled with them curled into each other, hoping against hope that both the people they misplaced will stay safe and well.

“Seunghoon?!” Speak of the devil, the urgency in Seokmin’s voice cuts through the static and crackle from the Pip-Boy tacked around his forearm. “Are you still in the tattoo studio? Come on, you need to leave that place right now!”

It’s not like he doesn’t understand the fears which worry and fold into Seokmin’s heart, ever since they left the vault months ago in search of Mino and Soonyoung. The same dread had increased exponentially, rating off the charts when he had vehemently insisted in making his way here – the place of all his regrets.

“Goddamnit Seunghoon, answer me!”

Before Minseok had taken them away from the vault, he warned them of the radiation remaining in the atmosphere of Ground Zero, not enough to kill but apparently enough to play on minds. Memories of things that never happened filling people’s minds when the barriers of reality and hallucinations aren’t set right, when regrets are so wrecking that they turned into deep longings to change just one part of the past, to say goodbye or to press a last kiss to a cheek, so that it wouldn’t hurt so much to think about who had been lost and left behind.

“Ugh Lee Seunghoon, I’m going to come get you and I. WILL. REALLY. KICK. YOUR. ASS. WHEN. I’M. THERE!”

Sitting in the dusty armchair that feels more fit for a tired tyrant on top of skulls and rivers of blood, he allows the flow of memories that leak from the walls into his mind and he relishes them all, especially those that don’t belong to him for they are far pleasant than the ones he keeps hidden in the cracks of his mind for the past two hundred years.

But Seunghoon can no longer lie to himself about what really happened before everything ended as the world knew it to be; the clouds of dust and smog, the minty green walls, the screams outside, Mino’s tear-stained face as the other begged him to come to Vault 111, how his own tears fell when he shook his head, saying that he couldn’t leave his mother all alone in Vault 326, how difficult it was to turn his back and leave Mino crying in the room.

Useless, unsubstantiated worries, he now realized, because his mother died six years after the vault was sealed, having refused the gene-altering serum with the heart-wrenching confession that she has had enough years to live without his father and she didn’t want any more of it. It was his fault for not realizing earlier that his mother would have understood if he had made the decision to leave her, because she of all people knew that love means _together, or not at all_.

He would give everything to turn back time and follow Mino that fateful night but now it is too late and he is not sure the other would ever forgive him.

Hurried footfalls sound in the quiet corridors before the door is blasted away – so much for stealth and deep cover. “Idiot!” Seokmin yells furiously (as he should be) and smacks the top of Seunghoon’s head hard, one (of many) bad habit(s) he really shouldn’t be picking up from Baekhyun.

“I will find you, Mino, even if I have to tear this universe apart, I will find you.” Seunghoon’s voice is weak but the words still vibrate around the place loud and clear, almost drowning out the boom of the flares a distance away.

“I don’t doubt that, you are quite a tenacious creature.” Seokmin catches him when he stumbles after taking a few tentative steps with his sprained ankle. The younger one’s eyes are affectionate and a gentle hand is wrapped around his waist as they take hurried but careful steps. “Minseok and Baekhyun are leaving once Jongdae clears Diamond City so we have to hurry.”

At the corner of his eyes, he sees it and in a hurry, he flings Seokmin’s arm off him before hobbling to the dining table. A huge W-shape is drawn on the centre of the wood with black bold lines and an interstellar pattern of black, green, pink and twinkling stars fill in the letter. Completing the drawing is a bracelet with three tiny circles- planets rotating around the W.

This is a sign that Mino was here just before him, he is sure of it, although he has no clue as to how or why his heart is beating with the most absolute certainty.

Both Pip-Boys alert them to an incoming message before Minseok’s words are issued out in a calm and composed voice.

“Seunghoon? Seokmin? Minseok here. We’re on our way to pick you two up. Change of plans … Listen, Jongdae has found two Vault 111 dwellers in Diamond City and we think they may be who you guys are looking for. They said their names are Song Mino and Kwon Soonyoung.”

  
_{the heart is a city, filled with_  
_the people it makes spaces for}_


End file.
